KickStarter Consortium: The Tower - now available on Early Access

[Infinitron]

From Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/idgi/consortium-the-tower/posts/1545119

Last chance to support us and become a Super Backer!

Greetings Kickstarter backers of Consortium: The Tower:

We know we 2aid our prev1ous update was to be our last, but we simply couldn't resist. We have hit our base funding goal on Fig. We're making this game. With YOUR help, we may be able to reach a stretch goal, perhaps even two? The first stretch goal is but $20K away, with 2 days remaining on the clock!

There are more than 2000 of you that were willing to reach into your wallets to help us raise the budget for Consortium: The Tower but did not follow us to Fig.

We wanted to give you all one last chance to take us up on our Super Backer offer... if you choose to back us now and claim your Super Backer status, you will get every Consortium game we ever make for free, forever! Check your messages from us, your custom link is there...

Finally - if you would like to take us up on this offer but for whatever reason choose not to use Fig to back us, PayPal is an option for you! Simply visit TheTowerGame.com and click "pledge via PayPal".

We sure hope to see some more of you join us as we embark on the most exciting project of our careers...

Thank-you!

Sincerely,

-iDGi and The Tower team

(p.s 2121212121)

 

[Infinitron]

The campaign ended just $2,000 from the first stretch goal. I wonder if they do it anyway.

 

[Bubbles]

Is this the time for PoE2?

 

[grimace]

3,046BACKERS
$348,538
OF$300,000GOAL
116%OF GOAL
This campaign succeeded onMay 11, 2016 8pm.

Success.

Access to the private Forum and the promised Daily Updates will begin around mid-late June.

Hurry up and wait.

 

[grimace]

Coming up for air…
Posted: 10/28/2016 Backer Only Content

https://www.fig.co/campaigns/consortium-the-tower?update=199#updates


The Fig stats show $348,538 raised of 300,000 goal.

Here's the video from April 4th 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSY5KW0ECCw

 

[Feyd Rautha]

The one year mark...

Greetings treasured seekers, backers and investors of Consortium: The Tower!

Production update
Exactly one year ago as of this update, Consortium: The Tower remained a well planned out dream coupled with some unplayable pre-production engine work. We could vividly imagine the insane possibilities that lay in a gameplay experience that heavily expanded upon CONSORTIUM. We imagined mapping deep exploration and stealth gameplay into the reactive and player agency driven narrative systems of the original, and our imagination was on display for everyone to see.
All of you were privy to our plans, you saw everything we did in pre-production in our pitch videos. And you chose to believe in our dream… well, your faith in us has paid off.
After a year of very intense production, iDGi has officially reached a major milestone: all core planned game mechanics for Consortium: The Tower are functional and working well together. In layman's terms, this just means that we now have a fully featured videogame with a hefty chunk of working content.
Here is a video that briefly showcases a chunk of what we have fully working. Please note that the gameplay footage shown here is all from our alpha build and should not be considered indicative of a finished game.



Most of the Churchill Hotel, which represents *roughly* 1/2 of the complete game, has been fully realized.

With this milestone achieved, what lies ahead for us is largely content creation and polish across the board. NPC choreography in particular comes later (this is an expensive and time consuming process, and we want to ensure all story/character logic issues are worked out before finalizing with choreo), as will a complete visual overhaul of the H.U.D.
Casting update
We are proud to announce that with the awesome help of Dave Chan over at Giant Sandbox we have cast the following awesome voice actors for various key characters in The Tower:
Mark Meer as “The Voice”

Matt Alden as “Alvarez Famosa”

Gord Marriott as “Malcolm Thomas”

Belinda Cornish as “Ellon Gibbons”

Also introducing newcomer Eric Fortin as "Elon Stone". Eric is the bassist and lead singer for the local Vancouver rock band Man The Wolf.

Watch for upcoming updates where we’ll give you a peek behind the scenes with V.O recording in both Studio X here in Vancouver for the main Consortium characters , and sessions with the new cast members in Edmonton.

Mark Meer performing lines for "The Voice" in Wolf Willow Studios in Edmonton, Alberta.

Gregory returns to Twitch! (Finally!)
Gregory promised he would do more regular Twitch streaming, but has unfortunately so far been unable to work it into his schedule.

Gregory will be giving everyone a big public update via Twitch - mark your proverbial or paper calendars for June 10th, 9am P.S.T. He will be playing the latest build of Consortium: The Tower in front of you all, commenting on the gameplay and taking everyone interested on a tour of the Churchill Tower rooftop and a wide variety of working gameplay mechanics.

Slacker Backer now available
Missed out on the action last year and want to support us now?

We’re now allowing for “Slacker Backers” to support us, with 3 new bundle tiers! The game will be ~ $34.99 U.S when completed, so backing us now yields you a good discount AND you will be directly helping us to make the game better. Also, the only way to get access to the Backer Special Edition of the game is to back us here.

We put some time thinking about a new “stretch goal” to unveil with this Fig update. However, let's all be honest here - Consortium: The Tower has a LOT of features. We practically dumped the entire Game Design Document into the campaign info and may have unveiled more specific details about our plans than any crowdfunded videogame before us.

So, one of our biggest challenges in front of us is really just being able to have enough time to test, polish and refine all of the features and content of the finished game. Each and every slacker backer that supports us now helps to enable us to keep the game in the oven long enough until it's truly ready.

Backer Demo is imminent…
Our next official milestone involves preparing a playable build of the first chunk of gameplay on the roof. No release date for the demo is yet set in stone, but just know that it's coming very soon!

Consortium Rook/Tower Contributor levels and higher will get access to this very first public Alpha release of Consortium: The Tower. This is an extremely important milestone for us because we’re such a small team, and our entire path forward will rely heavily on backer/player driven feedback and playtesting. This is a serious beast of a game, with many mechanics intermingling constantly, and we want to be sure it’s as satisfying and interesting to YOU as humanly possible.

Upon release of the demo we will be opening an additional forum in the backers section of our Community Forum and inviting everyone to play and send us feedback, bugs, etc. We may even potentially give some intrepid testers out there access to our JIRA to allow you to write up bugs directly into our system!

That’s about it for right now - it’s back to the development caves for us!

-- Gregory and the iDGi crew

“Visions are worth fighting for. Why spend your life making someone else’s dreams?” -- Tim Burton

 

[LESS T_T]

So it seems the alpha demo has delivered to eligible backers last month. Anyone played it? Is it under NDA?

 

[LESS T_T]

Coming soon to Early Acces:

Why Early Access?
“This game supports a wide variety of play styles. It is extremely non-linear and largely driven by gamer exploration and gameplay choices. As a result, there is a very large variety of custom paths through all of the content, and an unprecedented amount of replayability.

We are a very small dev team without the resources for traditional QA, and as a result we are looking for gamers to dive into our world and content and help us work out the kinks.

In addition - the remainder of the game's narrative is highly scalable, so too are some of the simulation features. We have a core story we want to tell, and a host of characters to tell it with, but many of the details can and will be tweaked based on player feedback and support. This process has already been tested through closed backer QA, and we’re very excited to open things up to a wider audience less familiar with our gameworld.

In other words, we would love to be able to expand upon our plans for the game, so this release is a test to see if there's enough interest from the Early Access Steam gaming community to allow us to make the most immersive single-player experience possible”

Approximately how long will this game be in Early Access?
“9-15 months, depending on many factors, upon which the entire story will be released and the game will be brought out of Early Access.”

How is the full version planned to differ from the Early Access version?
“Roughly one third to one half of the game’s final content is represented in our initial Early Access launch on Steam.

Choreography (lip syncing, facial animations and gestures) will be put in over the course of our time on Early Access, as scenes become finalized. Character animations and models are due to be vastly improved. The game's GUI will be given a major visual upgrade. In addition to the completion of the full interactive narrative, more characters, enemies, weapons and a ton more interactive dialogue is all among the remaining content we have planned for the game.”

What is the current state of the Early Access version?
“Core gameplay mechanics are all in and fully working as intended.

The main thing missing is choreography - this means facial/body, lip syncing, and conversation animations are still completely missing. This was a calculated decision on our part because once time and money are spent on choreo, those lines are done! It’s not cheap! Saving a choreo pass until later allows us to instead fully playtest the scenes, ensure they work as intended, and then we can cheaply and easily make changes as we see fit (changing and recording dialogue is faaaar easier/cheaper than choreo!).

There is, however, currently enough content for a minimum playtime of 6-7 hours. The included story content is designed to be a full introduction to the interactive narrative, and we have been careful to ensure the experience you can have now is hopefully fulfilling in and of itself.

Replay value is also unusually high for a game of this type”

Will the game be priced differently during and after Early Access?
“Yes.

The current price will be raised over the course of the project as additional content and features are brought online.”

How are you planning on involving the Community in your development process?
“In general we are extremely keen to listen very closely to the community and be sure to prioritize new content and features based directly on player feedback.

With each update, estimated to be once every two weeks, we will openly give credit for any features, fixes or changes that result from community feedback to us.”

 

[Karwelas]

My dikk is getting so hard for this game.

 

[Iznaliu]

My dikk is getting so hard for this game.

Insightful commentary. I suggest you read your own signature.

 

[Infinitron]

Coming soon to Early Acces:

Soon as in today, in a few hours.

ArchAngel You still hyped for this?

 

[Zombra]

Wasn't there something about how everyone who even tried to back the fig campaign was getting a copy of this? Something like that? Or all backers of the first game? Am I crazy? I'm probably crazy.

 

[Infinitron]

Wasn't there something about how everyone who even tried to back the fig campaign was getting a copy of this? Something like that? Or all backers of the first game? Am I crazy? I'm probably crazy.

Nah, they just gave a discount on the Fig campaign to all backers of the failed Kickstarter campaign.

 

[Infinitron]

Released:





Can anybody read the latest Fig update? https://www.fig.co/campaigns/consortium-the-tower?update=482#updates

 

[Iznaliu]

Dive into a world shaped by YOUR choices!

It would be refreshing to have a game claim that its world isn't shaped by your choices.

 

[LESS T_T]

Demo is available now coming soon on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ConsortiumTheTower/announcements/detail/2363687317209602282

212121 (Greetings Interdimensional Travellers),

The demo is finally locked and loaded, to be made live early tomorrow morning. (this is now 100% happening - no more delays).

We will post another announcement the moment this happens.

This version brings more updates and fixes (especially in the WaterHub area). But the thing we're most excited about is a brand new Agitation and Stealth HUD meters. We think they're more intuitive and are stylistically consistent with the rest of the Consortium HUD.

Give the latest a whirll and see for yourself, we hope you all agree!

See the complete revision list HERE.

FAQ:

"Completion Roadmap?” With the demo finally ready, we will be appling more time and effort to readying this for you all to see. Hopefully by the next update.

As always, please let us know what you think in the comments below, Steam forums, the i2DG1i forums[interdimensionalgames.com] or the Discord[discord.gg] channel.

Back to the iDGi-1 development and control center for us!

-- Gregory and the iDGi team

 

[ArchAngel]

Coming soon to Early Acces:

Soon as in today, in a few hours.

ArchAngel You still hyped for this?

I am but not enough to play Early Access. I fucked myself over with WL2 and said never again.

 

[LESS T_T]

Demo is available now on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ConsortiumTheTower/announcements/detail/2363687317209602282

Oops, deceived again. Demo button is on the store page but it's not live right now. Gabe really should fix this.

 

[LESS T_T]

Demo is available now on Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ConsortiumTheTower/announcements/detail/2363687317209602282

Oops, deceived again. Demo button is on the store page but it's not live right now. Gabe really should fix this.

Now it's live: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ConsortiumTheTower/announcements/detail/2363687317211719641

FREE DEMO now available...

Greetings everyone,

We have just released a playable demo for Consortium: The Tower on Steam. Included is the entire rooftop of the Churchill Tower. In a real-time first person environment you can fight, sneak, talk and explore (or any combination thereof).

We’re inviting anyone out there who might be interested in a hard-core, pure single-player role-playing experience that is nonlinear and highly replayable to check out our demo.

Anyone who purchases Consortium: The Tower or backs us on Fig and gains full access to the latest Alpha, you’ll be able to load any saved universe you created in the demo and continue your adventure seamlessly. You can also import saved universes from CONSORTIUM into the demo if you have them, but they are not necessary to enjoy the experience.

For those of you who already own our game, please consider helping us spread the word about this demo to friends and family who may be interested?

Also, for those with a twitter account - we would deeply appreciate you considering re-tweeting the following to help us spread the word?

https://twitter.com/iDGi_1/status/921425326504161280

Thanks and happy Friday!

-- Gregory and the entire iDGi crew

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/Consortium-The-Tower/Consortium-The-Tower-Demo

Consortium: The Tower's new playable demo offers freedom befitting an immersive sim

The original Consortium was a flawed gem. A Deus Ex-ish immersive sim with a Quantum Leap-meets-Star Trek setting. You were invited to inhabit the body of a Bishop - a power-armored man of action - and play out a tense siege scenario aboard a massive sci-fi aircraft time and time again, poking and prodding with dialogue choices and (entirely optional) violence to find your own personal solution.

The successfully fig-funded sequel, The Tower, is now available via Early Access. Presumably aiming to catch a few more eyes, developers Interdimensional Games Inc have released a short but very replayable demo to give players a taste of the choose-your-own-adventure format of the game.

While you should absolutely try the demo yourself, here's my first experience with it: You start the game falling out of a plane. Fortunately, this is the plan. The original Consortium ended (assuming you survived) with you beginning your jetpack-assisted descent towards a tower supposedly taken over by terrorists, the inhabitants held hostage. You're sent in to resolve the situation however you see fit.

Your choices begin almost immediately. The tower is within sight, you've been hit by lightning and every system aside from your landing jets has been damaged. You're given a recommended landing zone, but you're free to set down on any point on the massive rooftop. Or not - I presume that just results in an embarassing death. Your first goal is probably going to be vacuuming up random junk to convert into suit power, allowing you to repair one or more of your damaged systems, otherwise the only weapon you've got is a short-range taser.

Surprisingly, the guards patrolling the tower don't immediately open fire. if you dare to go up and talk with one, you'll find out they're under orders not to shoot unless shot at, and direct you to go find their leader. That's not to say they're friendly. They're nervous, and have a gauge detailing their stress level. Sneak around conspicuously, block their path or otherwise make a nuisance of yourself and they get increasingly likely to take a shot at you.

Of course, you're still free to repair your assault rifle and start popping heads if you'd rather play more of a Team America role, rather than a negotiator and peacekeeper. There are seven possible end-points for the demo, which spans just the rooftop area. My first run ended after surrendering to the rooftop squad captain, who seemed to be merely acting tough while whispering pleas for me to just play along with him. I obliged, and I'm interested to see how that'll pan out later.

It's cleary not a game produced with an enormous budget, raising just under $350,000 on Fig, but it's impressive with how far they're making it stretch. My only real complaint at this point is that the highest detail settings are a bit hard on my 1060 GTX, despite the graphics being light on texture detail. I'm sure I'll find a combination of settings that work better, though.

Give it a try and tell us how things went for you in the comments below. You can get the Consortium: The Tower here on Steam, and preorder the full game for £19/$25 (the current early access build spans the first 6-7 hours of the story) if you like it.

 

[Iznaliu]

They're nervous, and have a gauge detailing their stress level

This seems like something that more games could use.

 

[GreatBird]

Consortium: The Tower developer here...

We are hungry for feedback of all types, but especially critical feedback!

Bought it last night, it's decent, very much a blend of elements from SS2/DX etc. Dialogue system is done well, original for once - and the world design is stellar. The fact that they were inspired by Spector's core design doctrines just makes me certain they'll nail this, they are sincerely passionate. I hope it does well.

Thank-you! It's early days still, there's a lot of game to finish still but we'll get there!

But, some minor gripes:

Combat, unfortunately, plays out like a deranged Deus Ex: Invisible War. AI display an inconsistent level of tactics and the weapon feedback is so chaotic, that you feel very unsatisfied coming out of a firefight.

Might I ask you to consider hopping onto our forum and sharing more in-depth thoughts about this? We are determined to get combat to feel as good as possible this time around. What do you mean by the weapon feedback being chaotic?

NPC AI needs some serious tweaking in regards to sight/sound detection as well, trying to play stealthily is quite the joke as of now. All NPCs are basically eagle-eyed and have the combined hearing of a bat swarm. Not sure how anyone can play-test stealth it if it's not ready at a base level...

Similar to above, would love to know more. Note that it is possible to both upgrade your gear to be quieter (acoustics), and to find a stealth node capable of rendering you invisible. You might be interested to learn that despite how difficult it is tuned without any upgrades or a stealth node, there are playtesters who have successfully ghost incapacitated every soldier on the roof. (!)

The UI and inventory look good, but the energy system, thing, is unintuitive and very vague on how/what everything does. They are laughably verbose with inventory item descriptions, yet somehow still tell me nothing useful about the specific weapon/tool etc.

This feedback is gold. We will indeed improve our item descriptions and be sure to mention what gear uses Utility Energy and how it uses it.

The platforming controls and jetpack system are clunky as hell, really need to tweak that.

Would love more specifics? What sort of trouble were you having? The "spacebar to engage" the freefall suit thrusters do take a bit getting used to, but it does provide a powerful level of navigation freedom.

It's also just unfortunate they went with Unreal Engine 4 - the one engine that, out of the box, doesn't like to scale FOV properly on modern monitors, without an .ini fix, ugh. I wish developers would just ditch Unreal 4 already - the overall performance is just as unpredictable as XCOM 2 was (and still is). Terrible engine.

You played in September, which is before we optimized a bunch of the levels. The game should run quite a bit faster for you now across most levels. There's still more optimization to go, but it's gotten much better since September! The UE4 engine is great, but not all games properly optimize for it.

Thanks so much again for your feedback, we appreciate it!

-- Gregory "GreatBird" MacMartin

 

[Infinitron]

Crooked Bee Devtag for GreatBird - Interdimensional Games

 

[Junmarko]

Thank-you! It's early days still, there's a lot of game to finish still but we'll get there!

You played in September, which is before we optimized a bunch of the levels. The game should run quite a bit faster for you now across most levels. There's still more optimization to go, but it's gotten much better since September! The UE4 engine is great, but not all games properly optimize for it.

Thanks so much again for your feedback, we appreciate it!

-- Gregory "GreatBird" MacMartin

Hey Greg,

No problem, glad to support it.

I'll reinstall + re-play it over the weekend, seeing as my last play-test was back in September. Then I'll go over those points again and see if they still apply to the current build

(I think one major bug that made me quit early, was the game crashing in the lower levels of the tower/interior.)

Nice to see you guys are making steady progress. Keep at it man!

 

[GreatBird]

Now with Steam achievements. We're in this for the long haul. Producing a truly independent first-person immersive simulation is really hard. We make stuff like this to push ourselves and our understanding of what interactive entertainment is capable of.

So, yeah, I wanted to point those interested to our latest Steam update: http://steamcommunity.com/games/ConsortiumTheTower/announcements/detail/1592451506808379803

Happy Holidays, folks! I hope everyone stays safe and warm.

This looks like a super interesting community...